John Young Column

Dark money's assault on our planet

2022-08-07T21:56:00.001-05:00

Something is killing the Great Salt Lake. Any guesses what that might be?

Lake Mead and Lake Powell are in the clutches of the worst water-level drop in their life-giving histories. What might the problem be?

With hundreds of wildfires this year, over 200 Texas counties have earned "crop disaster area" designation. Any suggestions as to why?

No suggestions, no guesses, and certainly no solutions from Republican-controlled legislatures committed to bury their heads in arid sand.

All that concerns them is drilling, pumping and consuming – gas, oil, water – whatever. In other words, business as usual. The planet be damned.

In Utah, a rancher told the New York Times the existential crisis of the Great Salt Lake is an "environmental nuclear bomb."

Ho hum, say Republican lawmakers -- and voters who send them to the Capitol in Salt Lake City to ignore (Earth's) reality. This being a political body tightly wrapped around a Big Lie, why not falsehoods, about the very existence of our planet?

One would think Utah, with its stunning and delicate ecosystems, from snow caps to desert flats, would be as intently focused on the environment as any state. Nah.

As such, Utah is one of the states represented in a well-oiled contraption called the State Financial Officers Foundation. It's made up of Republican state treasurers devoted to undercutting any and all efforts at addressing climate change.

For instance, members vow to redirect state business away from "woke" businesses that express devotion to climate action.

Texas served as a model for this when Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law blocking state agencies from investing in businesses that have cut ties with fossil fuel companies.

In addition to spending taxpayer dollars to conspire thusly, the organization benefits from the largess of the Koch petrochemical dynasty and other players like the American Petroleum Institute, Heartland Institute and Heritage Foundation.

For those in a civics coma, this is one more example that parties matter, philosophies matter. Oh, yeah, and voting matters.

When pondering down-ballot races like treasurer and attorney general and secretary of state, consider the damage partisans can do, and many are sworn to do.

Rest assured, if one runs for any of these positions as a Republican, he or she can depend on massive dark money facilitated by the Citizens United ruling of 2010. Read all about the filthy stuff in Jane Mayer's "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right."

For decades, petro players like the Koch family have spent like mad to elect state officials who pledge to the vow that carbon extraction is next to godliness.

Part of that campaign is and was the effort to populate the courts with friends of polluters.

To that end, the biggest victory in the dark money offensive was the Supreme Court's recent ruling in West Virginia vs. EPA that ruled the agency couldn't regulate carbon emissions. That's up to Congress, sayeth the Koch Court.

In question was what's called the "Chevron deference," the principle that it's unrealistic to rely on lawmakers to sign off on intricacies of environmental policy, hence empowering the experts at the EPA.

The absence of such is frightening considering the technological ignorance that pervades this or any Congress.

Exhibit A was the explanation in 2006 by then Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, describing the internet as a "series of tubes."

Stevens said he was only speaking metaphorically. Whatever. For something more authoritative, let's leave it up to one of the Apollo astronauts, unattributed, who said of the level of technological expertise he found on Capitol Hill:

"A lot of these people, they don't know their butt from third base."

This fully explains what enlightenment awaits when innocents become industry sock puppets.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

We know what the majority supports; will it vote?

2022-07-31T23:42:00.000-05:00

Poll after poll after poll.

Name your indicator and know the Republican Party is completely out of touch with the majority of thought in America. Completely on the wrong side of history. Completely wrong. Period.

Abortion rights. Sane gun laws. LBGTQ rights and social advancement. Voting rights. The Affordable Care Act and other steps to insure more Americans.

Not to mention the desire never to see Donald Trump in a position of power again.

It's a rout. So how is it possible that the Party of Trump could reclaim control of Congress in the fall?

We all know how – the same way Trump became president in the first place: voter apathy -- miserable, unforgivable non-turnout by people who support all the above.

Republicans knew where the prize was when they looked at the bankruptcy king and said, "What the hell?" in 2016.

The prize was the Supreme Court. Trump got fewer votes, but thanks to the Electoral College, he got the prize.

Now Republicans hope – assume – that by way of voter apathy and gerrymandering they can have control of Congress with the new year.

For those very reasons, prospects are not good in the House.

A principal reason is a Supreme Court sculpted by the forces of backsliding and racism. Fair districts and much of what came from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have been flushed down the toilet.

Things are looking less bleak in the Senate, thanks to – drum roll – Donald Trump.

Trump's hand-picked celebrity candidates (Dr. Oz? Herschel Walker? Don't make us laugh.) and made-to-order election deniers aren't doing too well. Meanwhile, the abortion issue is proving to be exactly the kind of voter motivator Republican strategists feared.

Let's face it: The GOP's driving cause is to keep people away from the polls. When turnout goes up, Republican candidates go down.

Off-year elections are notoriously low turn-out. The party in power almost always gets punished by the "anti" vote – voters motivated by grudges and momentary concerns.

Inflation is the biggest concern of the moment, and Republicans hope to hang it around Democrats' necks.

Too much of the reporting on inflation has been a disservice ("What's the stock market saying?") Too few Americans understand that this is a global problem driven by two factors: supply-chain problems worldwide related to the pandemic and stunningly sweeping sanctions against Russia for the horrors it has wrought in Ukraine.

It's going to hurt the Democrats, without question.

Other issues are going to motivate people, however, headed by Republican policies to empower states to order every pregnant woman to gestate to term.

It's been stunning and revealing how quickly red-state legislatures have taken this step. Republicans will not profit from this politically.

Poll after poll after poll shows this to be true.

The horrifying carnage in Uvalde, Texas, once again has drawn a focus on the fact that the GOP is motivated not by public safety but the needs of commerce when it comes to gun-happy constituents -- and the gun lobby.

The organic grassroots protest in Uvalde demanding that Texas lawmakers convene in special session to age-restrict the purchase of assault weapons shows the desire among the masses to shed nutty Old West inclinations about killing machines.

The U.S. House was representing the majority of Americans when it voted to ban assault weapons last week. Of course, the gun lobby will ride the filibuster in the Senate, and dependable Republican lap dog obedience, to have the final say.

This is a scary time. Suddenly lawmakers must protect such things taken for granted, such as contraception and the right of privacy. The highest court has become an adversary of basic and long-held rights.

The majority must stand up. It must assert itself by voting. It must put the minority in its place this November, not in control of Congress.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Party of Trump is certifiably off its rocker

2022-07-24T23:41:00.001-05:00

Donald Trump and shoeshine boy Rudy Giuliani like to throw around claims of dead people voting in massive numbers.

Eight thousand dead voters in Philly! Make that 30,000!

Uh, yeah. As he admitted to Arizona's House speaker, Giuliani had no evidence for any of his claims, only theories.

Ah, but I'm here to report that Colorado has confirmed an instance. Sorry, Rudy, but the dead person's vote went to your client.

It's quite a story, actually, because the man who cast his presumed-dead wife's vote was (is?) being investigated for her murder.

Barry Morphew is the name, a resident of Chaffee County in Southern Colorado. His wife Suzanne disappeared two years ago. He was held for months as the prime suspect, then released in April when the case grew cold. Whoever killed Suzanne did a really good job of concealing the deed.

Morphew didn't try to conceal his illegal vote, however. He told the FBI, "I just thought I'd give (Trump) another vote. I figured all these other guys are cheating."

Who are "these other guys," Barry? Maybe Rudy can tell us. The only other cheaters we can lock-cinch confirm from 2020 were those conspiring to re-install Trump president after getting shellacked at the polls.

"All these other guys." That line is one of the fruits of the Big Lie.

Trump has built an industry of out of bogus claims, brick by brick. In the process, he's raked in millions of dollars from followers who believe he needs their money to investigate the "steal."

In the Jan. 6 rally that sent rioters on their merry way up the Capitol steps, Trump juiced the crowd with specious voter claims:

"Dead people. Lots of dead people. Thousands."

In Pennsylvania, he crowed, "you had 205,000 more votes than you had voters" and "10,000 votes illegally counted."

All were among the claims Trump's own attorney general, Bill Barr, pronounced to be "bullshit."

Of course, Trump knew it was all a lie. Steve Bannon assured as much in a broadcast before the 2020 election: When Trump lost, he was going to say he won – bigly. Then he would surf the wave of chaos as far as he could.

As grievous as was Trump's comportment, lounging before the big screen while big-bellied rioters assaulted the Capitol and threatened his vice president's life – more egregious is what the Big Lie has done to our elections system.

Draconian moves have been made nationwide to make voting more difficult and purge voters, all based on unconscionably bogus claims pertaining to "ballot security" and more.

Last week the Republican-majority Wisconsin legislature passed a bill to ban voting drop boxes except at county election headquarters.

As one who uses them, let me say, "You've got to be kidding."

Ballot drop boxes are absolutely secure and are the essence of voter convenience. No evidence exists – none – that they can or ever have been used fraudulently. They are more secure, for example, than the mailbox outside your pharmacy.

The only reason for this move is the Republican power structure's pledging allegiance to Trump's Big Lie.

It was a disgusting spectacle -- an insult to Americans far and wide -- that at its state convention, the Texas Republican Party voted to pronounce Joe Biden's win null and void.

Based on what? Rudy's "theories"? No -- based on the calculated fiction of one serial liar on the cusp of indictment for defrauding the U.S. government and fomenting an insurrection.

Texas Republicans also called for a vote on secession from the United States. Let me be the first to say:

Good luck, compadres. After our troops at Fort Hood, Fort Bliss, Fort Sam Houston and elsewhere occupy all major citadels, gulf ports, petrochemical facilities, oil fields and pro football palaces, and control the entire I-35 corridor, they will have reduced New Texas to a place where only the deer and antelope play – and a functioning electric grid won't matter at all.

The Republican Party, running on a lie and supporting a lawbreaker, isn't fit to hang a shingle in a constitutional republic.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Agents of chaos and criminality

2022-07-17T22:45:00.001-05:00

Where did they find these people? Roger Stone. Paul Manafort. Sidney Powell. John Eastman.

How is it that any of these people could ever be at the elbow of the most powerful man on the planet?

We know where they found Rudy Giuliani: begging for pizza crust and publicity on the sidewalks of New York.

And someone made a deep dive into the sewer where Steve Bannon dwells.

How did any in this police lineup gain entrance to the White House?

They were there at the behest of the former president who, if "justice" is more than a seven-letter world, will wear numbers on his chest for his next portrait.

So much to digest from Republicans inside the administration who appeared live and videotaped in the public hearings of the Jan. 6 Committee:

Team Crazy knew Donald Trump lost bigly, knew the courts wouldn't help him, ran into "deep state" resistance on seizing voting machines and appointing a special counsel (Powell) to declare the election stolen.

What was the final option for a pack of political thieves?

Chaos. That's what.

This is what Bannon was referring to in a podcast a few days before the 2020 election.

"What Trump's gonna do is just declare victory, right? He's gonna declare victory. But that doesn't mean he's a winner. He's just gonna say he's a winner."

This, he said, would create a "firestorm."

Bannon knew of what he was speaking. Chaos is what the man is all about, and why Trump so values his opinion.

Chaos – to disrupt the electoral count and cause discord in the streets with the hope of sending all of it back to pliant Republican-controlled legislatures.

"This is about Trump pushing for uncertainty in our country." That's not some liberal MSNBC talker venting. It's former campaign manager Brad Parscale in a text exchange expressing deep regret for having served "a sitting president asking for civil war."

Mike Pence's former chief counsel Greg Jacob testified to the committee that the whole idea – fake electors and all -- was to create a violence-inducing "constitutional jump ball" to create rage and confusion, with a void to be filled by the loser who wouldn't leave.

This is a criminal conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, plain and simple. People died, and democracy was gravely wounded.

Speaking of fraud, that's what the Department of Justice said Bannon did, claiming in 2020 that he siphoned from a fund ostensibly to raise private dollars to build a border wall. He got a Trump pardon, and returned to being one of America's loudest voices for political chaos.

If one wants a "smoking gun" on Donald Trump's intentions for Jan. 6, it comes from the caldron of chaos that is Bannon's own mouth.

After two phone calls Jan. 5 with the president, Bannon broadcast, "All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It's all converging and now we're on the point of attack."

Attack? The attack on democracy.

Again, where did they find these goons? Before he became editor of Breitbart, the online MAGA mouthpiece, Bannon was involved in a deep-data exploitation operation called Cambridge Analytica.

The now-defunct company, a client of the Trump campaign (after having helped Ted Cruz in his losing bid for the GOP nomination) dug into online activities of millions of average Americans on Facebook and then used targeted fake social media posts, pure disinformation, to influence them in advance of the 2016 election.

Read about it in the book "Mindf*ck" by former Cambridge Analytica insider Christopher Wylie.

In particular, posts were meant to discourage Black Americans from voting at all. It was cunningly evil. No bloc was more crucial to Donald Trump's victory than those who didn't vote.

So, how in the world did Trump and Bannon end up in a position to blow up the democracy that's the envy of the world? Apathy and disinformation, that's how.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Now, Coach will lead us in satanic verses

2022-07-10T22:08:00.001-05:00

When my son was in fifth grade in Texas, he found himself a pawn in a morality play. Literally.

His teacher, Mrs. Thrasher, had scripted a performance about early settlers taming the land. It was pastoral. Literally.

Central to the plot was the felling of trees and the milling of wood, presumably to build a cabin, or North America's first Starbucks.

The audience presumed wrong. The communal quest was fulfilled when the lumber was erected – into a cross.

My wife and I later would refer to the play as "Deforestation for Christ."

It was a stunning imposition of the teacher's religion not only on the class but on an audience.

This was just one wrinkle of an unabashedly evangelical quest for a person whose position of authority was granted by taxpayers.

Parents later learned that Mrs. Thrasher was leaning on her students to join a campus Bible club she was forming.

To the school district's great credit – this was Texas, after all -- she was fired for refusing to acknowledge that as a representative of the state her job was not to push her religion on captive audiences.

This made her a local folk hero among others who believe this to be a "Christian nation" and who think that the government's role is to make you, me and that guy on the corner more holy.

They say the worst thing that ever happened to schools is the end of organized school prayer. They call it "God removed from our schools." That's as much of a lie and deceit as "pro-life" for those who would engage the state of Texas in each woman's reproductive cycle.

Rest assured, for them it was "Praise Jesus" time when the Supreme Court ruled on behalf of a Bremerton, Wash., football coach who decided his calling is to make his religiosity a 50-yard-line spectacle.

Unanswered would be the court's position if the marching band formed a pentagram and played "Sympathy for the Devil."

Justice Neil Gorsuch's opinion said at issue was one man humbly offering "prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied."

That's a Trumpian falsehood. Video of coach Joseph Kennedy doing his thing shows a loud and zealous group activity that continued to grow in zeal.

If he's unplugged from Youtube, Justice Gorsuch could read press accounts including one in the Seattle Times of swarms of people from both sides of the field "hopping the fences and rushing to the field to be close to Kennedy before he started his prayer."

And there was no question about the coach's motives, either. He said the objective wasn't observing his faith in private but "helping these kids be better people."

In other words, he wasn't pulling a Tim Tebow. He was pulling a Billy Graham.

In the hands of this Supreme Court, the separation of church and state – and the liberties it protects -- stands to take a battering.

Yes, liberties – freedom of people of varied faiths to handle their business without imposition, interference or sponsorship from the government.

One of the great deceits of the religious right, and of the court majority, is that restrictions on states like the prohibition on school prayer are averse to religion.

It is just the opposite. The reason the founders included the religion clause of the First Amendment was to prevent the oppression posed by piously tyrannical majorities in the homelands of America's early settlers.

Prayer isn't calisthenics. The state can tell you to run laps to keep your pads.

The state can say, "Give me 20 pushups." But it's against the spirit and intent of the First Amendment for the state to say, in the form of a full-of-himself coach, "Now, gather around to pray" -- even if a reckless court now says it's OK.

Those who represent us have no business casting anyone in their morality plays.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Trump's only defense starts with "I"

2022-07-03T21:48:00.001-05:00

From what we've learned from the Jan. 6 Committee, Donald Trump may have to deploy a novel defense against the crime of seditious conspiracy.

Insanity.

This one must deduce from comments about the hurdle of "state of mind and intent" prosecutors would need to demonstrate to prove criminality.

To that effect, Trump World should be aggressively changing its tune in reacting to the explosive testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson.

Now, take notes, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson. You're all going to have to be on the same page if you want to keep him out of the clink. All together, now:

Of course, he assaulted a Secret Service agent and attempted to steer the limo to the Jan. 6 melee.

Of course, he threw plates of food at the White House wall.

Of course, he sought to lie and cheat his way back into the presidential residence – our residence -- he so soiled.

Of course. Of course. Of course. Why? Because he is Donald Trump. Does the law even apply to people insane with power lust?

At the risk of self-promoting, at this point I must return to something I wrote in 2019 about the first impeachable (and removable) thing a red-handed Trump was caught doing.

When first reports emerged that he sought to extort "a favor" from Ukraine's president to help facilitate a political hatchet job, I wrote this "Question to admirers of Donald Trump":

"When suspicions first were raised, did the man you helped elect sound like someone who asked the president of a foreign country to investigate the son of a political opponent?

"Ah ha. You nodded your head. Ever so slightly, you did.

"Or maybe you said, 'Hell, yeah.'"

Hell yeah. By now we know him all too well. Trump did what's alleged before the Jan. 6 committee – conspired to defraud the U.S. government (by extension you and me), raged against anything (such as truth) in his way, incited a riot, did nothing to save the lives endangered or lost, or the democracy teetering on the brink. Oh, and he fraudulently raised a lot of money doing it.

His only defense is insanity.

Tucker, Sean, Laura, "Fox & Friends": Do you want your preferred president to be gobbling up air time with collect calls from federal prison?

Then go with the insanity defense. Of course, he menaced that agent. Of course, the condiments flew.

Per today's Trump World talking point: Trying to deconstruct the case about the man's criminality into whether his fingerprints were on the agent's throat is an artful dodge about the whole mess – the conspiracy, the fraud, the violence – that these hearings are about.

But if you want to focus on those things, Team, say, "Yeah, the guy was out of his mind. He did it. Patently insane. Not guilty!"

Cassidy Hutchinson is of sound mind, and of eyes and ears. Not only that, she was down the hall. She was a birdie putt away.

Did you hear Trump say he barely knows her? Then he proceeded to rip her like, um, he knows her. Which is it? Do you know her or do you not? Don't bother. Plead state of mind.

What Trump did right there is an element of what prosecutors label "consciousness of guilt." The primary definition is concocting a "false alibi."

Wait? Did you know her? Or did you not?

Don't try to explain what Trump knew. Let the defense team take over:

"He doesn't know anything that can be held against him, your honor. He's out of his mind."

Everything we've learned since Jan. 6 fits exactly what we know of Trump – corrupt, conniving, venal and driven by self-interest, or at least what Vlad Putin deems that to be.

It's an open-and-shut case of criminality, corruption and treason. Cassidy Hutchinson had to ask, who in his right mind would have even contemplated it? The man down the hall did.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

What non-voters have wrought

2022-06-26T22:46:00.001-05:00

Last May, Gallup found eight of 10 Americans supported the right the Supreme Court just tossed in history's waste basket – the right for a woman to choose.

Next to go? Same-sex marriage in states bold enough to abolish it. A person's right to use contraception also is threatened.

What thereafter? Prohibition of interracial marriage? Resegregation of lunch counters?

Last week's ruling on abortion rights shows no precedent is going to stop Republican appointees from doing what partisans hired them to do.

Such are fruits reaped for leaving the most consequential matters in American history up to chance.

The chance that one justice would die on the cusp of a presidential election.

The chance that a previously pro-choice con man would become president with millions fewer votes than his progressive challenger.

The chance that on any number of matters – gun laws, reproductive rights, voting rights – the nation can and will be governed by a minority of a minority.

And we aren't just talking of the Cruz Caucus in a filibustered Senate.

In 2016 a lot of Republicans held their noses and voted for the Orange Con. They knew that the essence of the quest was control of the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile a whole bunch of squishy centrists and haven't-given-it much thought progressives, particularly at a tender age of self-induced ignorance, didn't vote.

They convinced themselves that it didn't matter, that "there's no difference between the parties," or, "Hillary's going to win."

The local newspaper where I live interviewed collegians wearing "Vote for Nobody" buttons. Hardee har-har.

The Electoral College wasn't the reason behind the con man's gaining the power to populate the courts in 2016. Apathy was.

Four years later sufficient Americans were appalled by the con man that they removed him from office. Too late for what would happen to the Supreme Court.

Three Supreme Court vacancies presented themselves in the four years prior, including one opened up when Senate Republicans denied even a hearing to Barack Obama's nominee.

So, two points: (1) elections matter; (2) parties matter.

Never in modern history have the two major political parties presented such stark differences – on abortion rights, on LGBTQ rights, on voting rights, on gun laws, on corporate control of lawmaking.

Oh, yes, corporate control. The conservative control of this court is corporate – the result of years of big-money plotting by interests like the Koch dynasty and proxies in the Federalist Society.

This is what we have because too many voters left too much of governing up to chance.

This matter goes back to when another Republican ascended to the presidency with fewer votes than his opponent.

Lest we forget: That man, George W. Bush, appointed Samuel Alito, author of last week's ruling, along with Chief Justice John Roberts.

In 2000 much was made of an already conservative Supreme Court siding with Bush in awarding Florida to him. Much was made of the unfairness of the Electoral College.

But the Supreme Court didn't award Florida to Bush. Nor did the voters who thought they were voting for Al Gore but were confused by ballots into voting for Patrick Buchanan.

What awarded the presidency to Bush was the thousands of progressive Floridians who cast a protest vote for Ralph Nader, somehow a blow for a greener world.

Ironic it was then that Gore -- too squishy for Nader voters – would win the Nobel Peace Prize for heroic efforts to warn the planet about what carbon pollution is doing to it and to us.

The bottom line: People who believe in all of the things Republicans oppose – abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, expanded voting rights, stronger gun laws -- have got to start voting against the those who would put the minority in charge on our highest court.

This is going to happen, in increasing numbers.

Trump himself, while crowing of his anti-choice achievement on Fox News, privately has warned that the Supreme Court's abortion ruling will hurt the GOP at the polls.

Darned right.

The lesson to voters: Stop leaving your government up to chance.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Deputized to defend abortion rights

2022-06-19T22:04:00.001-05:00

Rattle, rattle. What's that sound? It's a big-government conservative picking through the garbage of a woman alleged to have been pregnant.

Click, click. That's big-government conservatives hacking into a woman's menstrual cycle app.

When politicians make a woman's private medical decisions their own, things like this can happen.

Indeed, President Biden this week was pondering several measures, including having the Federal Trade Commission order the makers of apps that track menstrual cycles to warn users that their bodily functions could become prosecutorial fodder.

I hadn't considered the true ramifications of today's red-state rush to ban abortion until I read a fiery New York Times commentary from Fairfax County, Va., district attorney Steve Descano.

Descano is among a growing group of prosecutors who say they will not go after women or providers impacted by laws that criminalize abortion.

He wrote of "Orwellian" means tailored to Republican ends, say, if a woman had to prove to the state that a miscarriage was not an abortion.

Anti-abortion zealots will call that an overwrought notion. They won't blink, however, at laws right out of Orwell like deputizing citizens to sue providers and those who aid in abortions after fetal cardiac activity is noted, around six weeks into a pregnancy. The Texas Legislature crafted this bill in its 2021 session.

It is encouraging to hear of people like Descano and jurisdictions that won't play along with the quest to criminalize a woman's medical decisions.

The Austin City Council would effectively decriminalize abortion with a resolution putting it the very bottom of law enforcement priorities. Other cities like Dallas, Houston and San Antonio are considering similar measures.

Now it's time for all in the majority of Americans who support a woman's right to act on that feeling.

Consider yourselves deputized.

Joe Biden is doing it by considering options to preserve women's control of their own bodies.

One is to declare a national health emergency should the Supreme Court overturn Roe vs. Wade. Another would be to use federal authority to prevent states from prohibiting out-of-state travel to obtain health services.

Another would assert federal preeminence over state bans of abortion medication obtained across state lines.

To that end, on behalf of all deputized to defend reproductive rights, let me share this web site: shareabortionpill.info

It holds the key to obtaining abortion medication in a state that prohibits it, along with support from the growing number of entities.

Be a supporter.

Lend a hand, financially and vocally, to Planned Parenthood and organizations that do so much heavy lifting to help women control their own reproductive destinies.

No, we aren't just talking about abortion, though that's all the anti-choice right wants to talk about.

The anti-choice right, and scandalously, the leadership of the Republican Party, not only is a sworn enemy of Roe but also of contraception and its providers.

The Republican vendetta against Planned Parenthood is a disgrace – and indefensible – considering that no entity does more to help women avoid unwanted pregnancies and, by logical extension, the abortion dilemma.

To any big-government conservative who says, "How dare police and district attorneys not enforce an abortion ban" – what have you been saying when sheriffs in rural counties have refused to enforce red flag and other gun measures? Likely you've applauded them. Great Americans. Supporters of freedom.

Yes, freedom. Freedom to consult one's doctor. Freedom to decide how many mouths to feed.

With a Supreme Court ruling imminent, we are at the juncture where the dog that chased the car – the religious right with the Republican Party its master – catches the car and gets a bumper smack in the grill. The GOP will not prosper politically from this.

All deputized to defend reproductive rights must make sure the GOP feels the bite at the polls.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

The lie is what these hearings are about

2022-06-12T22:42:00.001-05:00

The polls say Liz Cheney will get scorched in August's Wyoming primary.

No surprise there. Donald Trump is The Man in a state where carbon is god and carbines are currency.

Wyoming's ruling majority embodies Trump's boast: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters."

Or he could sit on his hands during a terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Or revel at chants about executing his vice president.

Or piece together a political conspiracy to flush this democracy down the drain.

The horrors portrayed by the Jan. 6 committee will not penetrate enough consciences in Cheney's state to reward her own acts of conscience.

But Cheney won the evening – and assured herself a role in history's retelling -- when she said of her many Republican cohorts, "There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain."

The Fox News crowd can ignore them. The hearings will pierce enough consciences to further wound Trump and the party that continues to look the other way at his crimes and conniving.

In advance of the hearings, I was concerned that Day 1 mostly would be a chronology of the Capitol riot, a "seen it" matter for those not inclined to relive it.

To my immense pleasure, the first night did a masterful job of interweaving two crimes: the terrorist attack and the Big Lie that underpinned it.

Wow. What a testimony in the widened my-dad's-a-serial-liar eyes of Ivanka Trump.

What a testimony in the shrug of Jared Kushner, that the threatened resignations of those Trump put atop the Justice Department team were just "whining."

"Whining." I imagine that's what Kushner had to say about Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards who told of getting bear-sprayed, tear-gassed and crushed under a big-bellied mob.

All of this suffering. All of this trauma. All because of a lie and a liar. The most skilled and practiced liar in American history.

As former Missouri senator Claire McCaskill said on MSNBC, Donald Trump "embraced immoral lying all his life and thought he could get away with the ultimate lie of all."

A lie? Tucker Carlson says the whole Jan. 6 narrative is one of those. "It wasn't an insurrection," he hyperventilated as the committee convened. Tucker is going to play the semantics game. The terrorists were playing a head-cracking game.

The good thing about where these hearings appear headed is that the lie is the thing.

Ah, but, "Trump was just exercising his right to free speech at the Ellipse." "He couldn't know a riot would emanate." "There's no evidence he conspired directly with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers."

The fact is, all of these matters are immaterial. This is all about the lie and the conspiracy to make it into reality.

The lie was why the rioters were there. Co-conspirators like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Mike Lee, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are central to why rioters were ready for war.

Trump continues to prosecute that lie, continues to raise money to advance the lie. This is not good for the party that has sworn allegiance to him.

What becomes of Liz Cheney after conscience-less voters vote her out? Here is my fondest wish:

Cheney should run as a third-party candidate for president. Former GOP chairman Michael Steele asserts there's a growing political segment called "accountability Republicans" who would cringe to vote Democrat but don't want another Trump presidency.

It would also mean that at every debate, and every step of Trump's candidacy, she would be there, reminding voters of what he is all about.

Cheney as an option on the ticket would be the death knell for the Trump phenomenon.

Then Trump truly will be gone, leaving in office only those whose dishonor will remain.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Big Lie hearings will make memories

2022-06-05T22:03:00.001-05:00

I wonder if anyone else my age thinks of Watergate as a bonding experience. I certainly do.

I was home from college. My father and I watched every second of the congressional hearings, he on his olive-green recliner, me on the floor, sometimes gripping the tan ottoman as we watched the Nixon administration unravel in a cavalcade of lies.

A similar opportunity awaits with public hearings on Jan. 6 and the Big Lie, starting Thursday evening June 9.

Pull up an ottoman.

Not to equate Jan. 6 and Watergate. They don't compare. In scope and intent, Donald Trump's effort to subvert democracy is Hurricane Katrina, and Watergate is but a spring mist.

Back in '73 we got to know the names: Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Colson, Liddy.

Crooks they were, con men, serving a man who said he wasn't one of those.

Ah, memories.

Now let Americans be reminded of those who not only helped organize an insurrection but conspired in the shadows to literally wrench democracy from the voters' hands.

Let Americans know about Trump's role.

For a long time, the issue seemed to be that while rioters were overtaking the Capitol, Trump was silent. Now we know that he was celebrating it, even the urgings of his trained goons to hang his vice president.

Let's hear about that.

Let's hear about the parade of people who urged Trump to show a thimble full of conscience and express his outrage. Instead, his message to the terrorists was, "We love you."

There's so much more for Americans to know. We deserve to know more about the fake electors lined up to make it so the 2020 election never happened. A Georgia grand jury right now is hearing about that abomination.

We deserve to know more about the war-room strategy of Trump toadies in Congress to stop the count in hopes that Mike Pence would throw out what the people did. Of course, he had no such power. He said so. Then Trump issued a statement saying Pence said just the opposite.

As a liar, Trump makes Richard Nixon look like Nathan Hale. Hale had only one life to give for his country. What a sucker. To hold power, Trump would let his country die.

The truth about the Big Lie is that it wasn't precipitated by anything that happened on Election Day 2020. Trump telegraphed his claims of a rigged election long before the voters said, "Out."

The morning after his 3 million-vote drubbing, Trump strode to the mike and delivered, what Jonathan Karl, in his book "Betrayal," calls "perhaps the most dangerous speech by a president ever."

That's where the Big Lie was born -- Trump saying he had won, and won by a lot, calling the results of the election a "fraud on the American public."

The seeds of insurrection had been sown.

At this point, more than 150 people who broke the law Jan. 6 have been convicted. One law-breaker is at the fifth tee right now.

There's a useless discussion about whether the Jan. 6 hearings will change minds. For those who subscribe to the disinformation of Fox News talkers, no way.

But a lot of people, the independent voters who don't hang on Sean Hannity's every word, will be listening and be reminded, some forewarned in detailed fashion, of the threat Donald Trump and his Republican Party present to our nation.

Those memories will linger.

Right now, adherents of the Big Liar are drawing up plans to subvert all elections with the goal of gaslighting voters in the next presidential election to re-install their guy as president. Where possible, they are installing election deniers to administer voting --foxes salivating in the hen house.

Nothing Richard Nixon ever conceived matched what Donald Trump tried and his supporters continue to try.

Another key distinction: When Nixon's connivers and conspirators were sent on their penal ways, they were done. Trump and his conspirators are not done.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

'Warning signs'? How about at point of purchase?

2022-05-29T23:26:00.000-05:00

As Donald Trump butchered the names of the 21 Uvalde dead, a ghoulish gong chimed for each.

That's not what was heard by those he addressed at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston.

Each gong was a "ka-ching."

"Ka-ching" for gun sales to come, for appliances of death to fly off shelves, for profits to swell. They always do after a major mass shooting, you know.

So, too, with campaign funds.

Trump got a standing O. Ted Cruz, too. That's some courage. A group pays you gobs of campaign stash to do something. You do it. People stand, applaud, and donate more.

This is a simple transaction.

Transactions – riches exchanged for the power to kill -- are what this is all about, not the Constitution. The gun lobby's (and the GOP's) interpretation of the Second Amendment, said Chief Justice Warren Burger, a Republican appointee, was "one of the biggest pieces of fraud on the American people by special interest groups."

Recently Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted to chide Texans at figures showing California tops in gun sales and Texas No 2.

Let's keep that hardware flowing. The better to fund our campaigns.

"Arm teachers," say Cruz and fellow NRA marionettes. Texas has allowed this for some time. Few teachers are willing. All of them should be affronted that they are asked to do what Ted Cruz won't – step forward and do something to save lives.

What a high-caliber canard from the Thoughts and Prayers Caucus.

"Arm teachers" ignores the other venues where heavily armed and armored individuals have laid innocents low with weapons of war – which is just about anywhere.

Except at NRA pow-wows – no guns allowed there.

'Warning signs" are things we contemplate, and about which news services report, when things like this happen. Mostly we read about messages on social media from young maniacal males telegraphing their deeds. Rarely do they make it a secret.

Everyone should take those words seriously. But the most acute "warning sign" is when that young man plunks down money for an assault weapon, a truckload of ammo and tactical gear.

Whoever sells it to him has blood on his hands.

The Constitution does not convey the right of anyone to buy any weapon imaginable. The assault weapons ban that a Republican majority in Congress allowed to lapse in 2004 was upheld by the courts. "To bear arms" doesn't mean "any and all arms."

Those who say such restrictions don't do a thing are ignorant of the facts.

In the first four and half years of that ban on the sale and importation of specified weapons, signed by President Clinton in 1994, the nation had no – zero – mass shootings.

The fact that so many AR and AK weapons are in circulation should be noted as wholly irrelevant. The objective should be to put up official roadblocks at every step and start to curb their rush into human hands.

As to another canard – that there's no such thing as an "assault weapon" – the answer should be: An assault weapon is whatever we, the people, say it is.

Similar logic should apply to high-capacity magazines. How much is too much firepower? It should be what we, the people, deem it to be.

The National Rifle Association should not write our laws. Those are our laws. This land is our land.

Gun violence is the greatest crisis this country has ever faced. Last year alone 17,555 Americans died at the end of a gun.

That toll being just shy of six 9/11 catastrophes, we should have precautions that are six times as stringent.

That would mean a ban on the sale of assault weapons, universal background checks, FBI probes for social media threats or the purchase of excessive ammunition or Kevlar vests. And that should just be the beginning.

At the NRA meeting ("No time to politicize these things") Trump ended his purely political appeal to friends and donors with what one report called a "cha-cha dance."

So solemn, so respectful in the face of tragedy. But then, the media had misreported. He was actually doing the "ka-ching" dance.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

'Replacement theory' is designer ignorance

2022-05-23T22:01:00.001-05:00

Dear Fox News viewer: Whatever you might think about "critical race theory," one thing it hasn't done is kill anyone.

Not like the "replacement theory" Tucker Carlson can't stop talking about, the "great replacement" that drove a man many miles to a grocery store in Buffalo to shoot Black people.

The same idea, Tucker's pet talking point, motivated a gunman to kill 23 brown-skinned people at an El Paso Walmart in 2019.

It's the same idea that has been so politically profitable for a certain political demagogue who won the presidency in 2016. Find your constituents. Scare your constituents.

Hear Cynthia Miller-Idriss, senior fellow with the Center for the Analysis of the Radical Right:

"Rhetoric that uses the word 'replace' definitely legitimizes and reinforces the idea of a 'great replacement.' Language like 'invasion,' 'incursion,' 'defense,' all reinforce the idea of a threat."

Throw in "caravan." All are preferred terms of Donald Trump and MAGA zealots.

Of course, if we understand American history, we realize that the forefathers of MAGA were marginalized and terrorized.

The Irish. The Germans. The Italians. "Coming to replace us."

What were Protestants protesting, anyway? Repression at the hands of the majority. They were the "others" across the ocean.

The root of the Baptist denomination was the oppression of a tyrannical sectarian majority and the imperative of separating church and state.

This is American history. It is fascinating that people who spread fear and distrust keep these truths at education's margins, and put myths about Manifest Destiny front and center.

That brings us to what candidates seeking to appeal to aggrieved whites (aggrieved about . . .?) have chosen as the boogieman of the moment: "critical race theory."

Rather than attempt to dissect what exactly the term means, let's just say that what opponents fear is too much truth.

Too much truth can make you think.

Here are some truths:

The vast majority of Black soldiers who fought and died for freedom overseas in World War II were excluded from the GI Bill of Rights.

This is because lawmakers in the South made sure the federal program was administered by states, putting Jim Crow segregationists in charge of the many benefits returning soldiers expected and white soldiers enjoyed.

That may be the clearest example of how institutional racism is part of this nation's DNA. And I know that if the preceding words were in a textbook in Texas, Florida and a host of states run by social censors, they would never see the light of day. If the state didn't censor them, the teacher would, in order to keep a job increasingly in peril.

In Virginia, Glenn Youngkin shamelessly campaigned for governor on the supposed threat posed by critical race theory. In victory, he issued an executive order banning it, whatever the term means.

In practice, for instance,I presume it means Virginia school children have no chance of learning that Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act in 1924, which, in prohibiting interracial marriage and otherwise legitimizing segregation, defined a white person as having "no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian."

Institutional racism? A scurrilous claim!

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if the Buffalo shooter had repeatedly seen the truth about America's history of racial exclusion and the hysteria historically aimed at the "others," he would possess a shred of life-sparing empathy.

Jim Crow was at the height of his glory, the Ku Klux Klan ruling many statehouses, when in a speech to the Urban League in 1946, Albert Einstein said the truth about America's racist underpinnings must never be obscured:

"The taboo 'let's-not-talk-about-it' must be broken. It must be pointed out time and time again," saying the treatment of people of color was "a slap in the face of the Constitution."

This treatment of "the other" is the story of all of us. People who know it are far more prone to understand those of us who still feel the weight of yesterday's oppression.

Education saves lives. Designer ignorance kills.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

To serve his country, not a conniving president

2022-05-15T23:45:00.001-05:00

In his book about testifying in Donald Trump's first impeachment inquiry, Alexander Vindman recounts a heated argument with his Russian immigrant father.

"Support the president," his father shouted. "Do whatever the president wants."

But Vindman, a decorated Army lieutenant colonel, knew his obligation was to his country, not to a corrupt and conniving leader.

And so Vindman testified against Trump, his commander in chief. Then he felt the wrath of right-wing barkers and a cast of reality TV players posing as public servants.

In his memoir, "Here, Right Matters," Vindman writes that the urgings of his father, a Trump supporter, were conditioned by a Soviet system in which acceding to power and to "backroom corruption" was the only way to survive.

In that way the elder was right. Vindman was committing career suicide.

But Vindman voices not a shred of regret.

It was his job to observe the infamous 2019 call between Trump and Ukraine's leader in which Trump tried to use U.S. tax dollars as a lever toward a political dirty deed.

Vindman courageously reported Trump's attempt to extort the struggling nation for petty political purposes.

Agreeing to testify in the hearings about Trump's actions, he was electronically crucified on cable TV. Then the White House stripped him of his foreign-service duties.

In 2019, with Russia menacing the country, our president was blocking the very sustenance keeping Ukraine from being consumed by Vladimir Putin's forces.

Trump freed up the aid to Ukraine only after reports about his plot broke in the press and Democrats in Congress demanded answers.

Vindman, the National Security Council point man on Ukraine, watched with horror as assistance to Ukraine hung in the balance over what he calls "sleazy domestic political considerations."

Any so-called public servant who looked the other way in the face of this wasn't interested in serving the country but his or her own partisan skin – Soviet-style.

Vindman's four-word reaction to his treatment by Republican inquisitors in his hearings summed it up: "Truth was their enemy."

As for the transcript of the notorious "do us a favor" call, Vindman confirms it was doctored so as not to show how explicit Trump was about the anti-Joe Biden claims he wanted to plant in Zelensky's ear.

What we know now is that apart from an actual investigation of spurious allegations, Trump wanted a statement from Zelensky that his government was investigating Biden, whether it did or not. This was a staggering abuse of presidential power. Trump shouldn't have served one more day in office.

Even without actions that launched the third impeachment trial in American history -- with another to come before Trump was ousted – Vindman writes that he saw enough to consider Trump unfit.

Vindman writes that he observed "inattention to any policy, much less foreign policy."

Because Trump "never provided any policy guidance," Vindman writes, "nobody in responsible circles took his remarks seriously on policy direction."

One direction was clear, however, writes Vindman: an alarming stance of "accommodation and appeasement toward Russia," paired with an "inexplicable hostility toward Ukraine."

Americans should cringe when Republican enablers express their concern for the security of the country Trump tried to screw. This includes lawmakers who authorized that aid in 2019 and watched Trump dangle it like a ball of yarn.

To read what Vindman's experienced, including his dismissal from his job and his unplanned retirement from the military, is to feel his loneliness in dealing with people who not only excuse but embrace one man's ruthlessness and criminality.

Rather than the "traitor" Fox News squawkers called him, Vindman is a true patriot who believes in a nation of shared interests and fundamental principles like service over self.

One can be excused, however, in reading his memoir and seeing ours as not one nation indivisible but as dueling tribes that have lost any sense of commonality.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Silent squires of suffering without Roe

2022-05-09T09:19:00.001-05:00

This is not about Alito, or Kavanaugh, or Gorsuch, or the Federalist Society, our now de facto judicial branch.

This is about Olivia. She's 16. A beauty. A waitress. She met a guy. Dreamy. Twenty-two. Great car. Said he loved her. Then an EPT changed his tune. He lost that loving feeling. He's gone.

A little romance, and a little statutory rape. To the Republicans who rule Olivia's state, it doesn't matter. Nor does any other contingency that would face a woman when a pregnancy brings lawmakers, mostly male, into her life.

Her body, her privacy, her medical decision, is not hers. It is theirs.

Again, this is about Olivia. The smooth-talking sire will bear no penalty. Men in good suits will bear no penalty, will never know inconvenience.

Or maybe on Election Day they will. This election and the next. Maybe the majority of Americans consistently supporting abortion rights will rise up and be counted.

No more apathy, no more assumptions that a woman's reproductive decisions, and Americans' privacy rights, will be protected by the Constitution.

That majority must make Republican lawmakers defend their choice, over and over.

Does anyone remember when it was hard to tell between Democrats and Republicans? I do. Kennedy and Nixon had so little that distinguished each other that their only true disagreement in their televised debates came down to the disposition of Quemoy and Matsu.

Don't bother to look them up.

Now, the GOP has become a party of raw oppression. Democrats, or at least the vast majority holding public office, are the defenders of the oppressed.

Roe vs. Wade was so "egregiously" decided that 50 years of courts upheld it over and over and over.

But then, across that half century, justices were presumed to be about the law, and precedent, not what might tip a primary election.

And so here we are. Republicans and Fox News commentators want to talk about who leaked the fact that this court is about to dynamite Roe. They don't dare talk about what this will do to women.

Not a word. Like Olivia's boyfriend, they are mute, assuming they are immune to the consequences of what they've done.

It is all sobering and scandalous: Like a con man ascending to the presidency with a million fewer votes than his opponent. Like a Senate refusing to have hearings for one Supreme Court nominee and rushing to have hearings for another.

This is not majority rule. This is a few having their way over the rest of a nation, and over the Constitution.

The tendency is to say, "These things happen." That's a cop-out.

The right to abortion hung in the balance going into the 2016 presidential election. Republicans knew what the stakes were. A lot of people who are aghast at what the Supreme Court is poised to do didn't think things through. They stayed home that Election Day.

A lot of people want to blame the Electoral College for this development. Others want to blame the filibuster. Neither is correct.

The reason this happened was because of apathy – apathy that bequeathed us the Trump presidency, apathy that ceded the bullet points of this discussion to "pro-life" propagandists.

The demise of Roe will be a national tragedy. But now the battle lines are clear. They are in each state and each legislature.

No one running for statehouse should be allowed to waltz onto a stage without a succinct explanation of his or her stance on empowering the state to order a woman to gestate to term.

No one running for Congress or the statehouse should be allowed to wink away what happens when a woman is victimized by rape, incest or faces a life-threating pregnancy.

Alito, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch will never have to face what Olivia now must. But we must make every lawmaker face the ramifications of what these justices decide.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Staggering toll of willful negligence

2022-05-01T23:49:00.001-05:00

With an American death toll soon to reach 1 million from COVID-19, Crede Bailey is a whole other statistic.

It didn't kill him. It only took his leg and ruined his lungs.

I wouldn't know of Bailey's suffering had I not read about his boss's staggering negligence in Jonathan Karl's "Betrayal."

Bailey was director of Donald Trump's security office. As such he was one of many victims of what Karl calls "almost total disregard for COVID protocols" in the early stages of the pandemic.

Bailey was hospitalized for three months, ultimately suffering permanent damage to his lungs and amputation of the lower part of his right leg.

This from an illness that Trump said at a campaign rally "affects virtually no one at all."

Karl's book has drawn most of its attention for describing the events of Jan. 6 and Trump's efforts to nullify his rejection by voters.

However, its depiction on how the Trump White House behaved during the pandemic is every bit as scandalous.

People continue to die from the pandemic Trump so brazenly dismissed.

No employer would have been allowed to endanger his employees like Trump did -- and by extension, the people he swore to defend and protect.

Chris Christie spent a week in intensive care battling the disease after attending a super-spreader event at the White House staged for TV and the introduction of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

He had dodged a bullet earlier when, in helping prep Trump for a debate, he was in close contact with Trump aide Hope Hicks, who was infected.

Unlike any responsible entity in the midst of a deadly pandemic, the White House didn't inform Christie or others that they might be infected. He found that out from a CNN reporter who told him of Hicks' illness and asked how he was.

Trump apparently couldn't care less.

There was the deadly cover-up about Trump's blowing off COVID testing as he prepared to join Joe Biden on a stage in Cleveland.

When Trump got the virus and was himself in ICU, it became a lie-filled TV extravaganza, with white-coated props sent out to dismiss what later was shown to have been a very serious situation.

Did we say extravaganza? That certainly was the case when Trump returned to the White House for a diva moment on the balcony. It could have been even more outrageous. Aides told Karl that Trump had talked to them about wearing a Superman shirt under his suit and ripping off his dress shirt to reveal his "S."

It was all a joke to the man, or at least he wanted to downplay the threat at every turn.

Meanwhile, people died.

Last week documents from the Centers for Disease Control revealed how the White House shot down recommendations that churches begin hosting services remotely or with drive-through services rather than spread the virus through singing, hugging and prayer.

Interestingly, the White House lawyer who prepared the memo, found reason for a yuck: "I will say that if I was old and vulnerable (I do feel old and vulnerable), drive-through services would sound welcome."

And now we have a million dead Americans – many of whom are dead because the leader they venerated executed his official duties so callously. Tragically, many of his followers comported themselves the very same way.

The disease Trump said would cause so little suffering – no worse than the flu – over the last two years was the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer.

Another staggering number: an estimated 200,000 American children have lost one or both parents to the disease.

Now vaccines stunt its devastation. But before vaccines, an ounce of prevention would have saved lives, and at least one man's lungs and limb.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Of legal weed and monkeys on the wing

2022-04-24T19:41:00.001-05:00

Why did Texas Gov. Greg Abbott back down and revoke the wrench he threw into truck traffic at the border?

Because it caused produce to rot and manufacturers to gasp for precious parts?

Because it broke the law – trade and borders being Congress' responsibility?

Because it was the biggest black eye since policy makers had to admit Texas was not impervious to winter?

All are theories. Here's mine: New Mexico just legalized marijuana.

That's right. And you know what that means: Texas has some arresting to do.

So, summon all flying monkeys. Get the dungeons ready.

On the subject of trade, New Mexico is about to have a harvest. Texas will show though steely resolve that incarceration is its most important product.

New Mexico is acknowledging that pot shops are a ton better for public health than people behind bars.

Colorado came to realize this 10 years ago with legalization – voters making an end run on the Legislature with a referendum.

No doubt New Mexicans observed the amazing commercial revival of Trinidad, Colo., the first Colorado city to its north on I-25.

The better times are about more than weed, but it is the most obvious jolt, as any visitor will see with all the refreshed storefronts there.

So, get ready for better times, Clayton, N.M. Get ready, Tucumcari, Clovis and Hobbs.

And get ready, Texas penal industrial complex.

A lot of Americans are aghast at what has happened to Texas' own Brittney Griner, the Baylor star locked in limbo in Russia for alleged possession of hash oil.

What say, Texans? How about you, Arizonans and Oklahomans?

The fact is, what she now endures differs only by degree from what happens in the Land of the Free.

A few years ago, I interviewed an Oklahoma man who was sentenced to 93 years in federal prison in Texas for growing marijuana in his basement for medicinal purposes.

His hands had grown purplish and gnarled from rheumatoid arthritis. He didn't want to be amped up on opioids to deal with it. That didn't matter to prosecutors.

A judge finally reduced his sentence. Yet his horrible crime cost him four years of his life. How ridiculous.

Colorado recently expunged wholesale a mass of arrests and incarcerations for crimes involving pot.

What a waste of taxpayers' money. What a waste of human potential.

The people who fought legalization have not been able to convince Coloradans that they made a mistake in 2012. Meanwhile, the industry produced a windfall that helped the state balance its books and pay for schools.

Yes, legalization is good for the economy, not just because of the new business it generates but also because of the wasted law enforcement and corrections costs.

Generations of hypocrisy have trailed the prohibition on pot, with alcohol causing far more human destruction.

It is particularly outrageous for anyone to have a criminal record for an act that now is legal in 18 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Back to Texas embarrassment at the Mexico border.

It was highly reminiscent of Greg Abbott's quest as attorney general to demonstrate that his state was awash with illegal voting. No, it wasn't.

This time a pointless, showboating Abbott's caused trucks to stack up for miles but found zero drugs, no contraband, no illegal entrants.

Rats! So, send the winged hordes up to Texline, to Farwell, to Pine Springs and all Texas points along the New Mexico state line. Surely someone smelling funny can get hauled into headquarters and Texans can be made to feel safer.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

The shrinking tent of Trump's GOP

2022-04-17T22:50:00.001-05:00

"Big Tent Party." The words still ring in my ears.

It was the 1992 GOP National Convention, which I covered at the Houston Astrodome, and the party wanted us all to know it welcomed all sorts.

Thirty years later, the party has become, without apology, a closed society.

The '92 convention didn't look like a big-tent affair. Almost no people of color, and ringing denunciations of the "gay agenda. But at least it had a platform that conventioneers could debate.

The 2020 platform featured no debate and no troubling details. Whatever Donald Trump wanted, that was it.

Speaking of discourse, the GOP just walked away from the Commission on Presidential Debates.

The message: Anything that doesn't comport with Trump-style confirmation bias is unacceptable.

The GOP complained about biased moderators (Chris Wallace? Martha Raddatz?). By its standards, the only acceptable journalists would be members of the Fox News toady brigade.

Trump said the commission sided with Joe Biden when it decided to mute candidates to prevent them (meaning Trump) from interrupting each other.

Speaking as a commission member, former senator John Danforth, a Republican, quipped that if he wanted to aid Biden, "the last thing I would have wanted" would be to prevent Trump from further embarrassing himself.

On the closed-society front, Republicans in many states have set out to block or challenge open primaries by which independents might have a say in who gets the GOP nomination.

Clearly this is meant to benefit the hardest-core Trumpites, the ones most devoted to the Big Lie and right-wing conspiracy theories.

The party is doing everything possible to purge or marginalize anyone who does not proclaim "the election was stolen."

With its authoritarian tactics and with a Big Lie as its foundation, Trump's party has become a mirror image of Putin's party. The media is the enemy? Truth is the enemy.

After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, an interview about Russian disinformation with Peter Pomerantsev, author of the 2019 book "This Is Not Propaganda" would make anyone think of Trump.

He said that Putin's modern-day approach to controlling the narrative in his land wasn't just to lie about what he does but to confuse commoners with claims of "they're out to get you" conspiracies. Translation: Paranoia is the friend of despots.

Pomerantsev pointed to a "strategic message" – a "sort of cynicism that makes you dependent" on a strongman leader.

He was speaking of Putin, but most clearly such messaging translates well in the MAGA world.

Only Trump speaks the truth. Anyone who questions him is the enemy. Foremost are the media and all those fact-checkers.

Trump, as with Putin, has established among his partisans that he owns truth, in essence to change reality.

"It's a very old thing," says Pomerantsev. "By saying, 'I have power over reality,' he's saying, 'I have true power.'"

The author is referring to Putin there, but the parallels with that other guy are most pronounced.

Back to that Astrodome gathering where conventioneers indulged insurgent Pat Buchanan's Trump-like "culture war" rant and embraced incumbent George H.W. Bush and GOP tradition.

After the nomination, the extended Bush family bathed in confetti, a sitting president and one to come.

Today those still here from that '92 Bush family portrait detest Trump as one who has flouted norms and alliances, and who fomented a riot to nullify a lawful election. Their acknowledgement of these truths makes them "RINOs." Trump's party spits on them.

In 2022 the GOP tent isn't big enough even for them.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

I pledge allegiance to her right to sit

2022-04-10T23:02:00.001-05:00

Mari Oliver is my hero. Me and Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Abe Lincoln and so many people of consequence.

Much more consequence than, say, responsible figures at her school who harassed her because she would not recite the Pledge of Allegiance as Texas requires classes to do.

Much more consequence than the lawmakers who made it the law for her to stand and say something she didn't believe.

Theodore Roosevelt once called the questioning of authority "the first responsibility of every citizen." The high school senior did that in refusing to stand for the pledge, though slings and arrows flew.

Last week a court awarded her $90,000 for the grief she endured at Klein Oak High in Spring, Texas, when she refused to stand for the pledge.

Oliver said she refused because she doesn't believe this country guarantees "liberty and justice for all."

She also objected to "under God," as this nation isn't founded "under God." It is founded under a constitution that gives no special prerogative to believers vs. non-believers.

What the high-schooler did may make your molars ache, like Colin Kaepernick taking a knee. But as Abe Lincoln wrote, "If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it."

Texas also makes public school students recite the "Texas pledge" – 17 words including "under God." Never did that recitation make anyone more godly -- as if that ever were the state's function.

The oath says, "honor the Texas flag," something which also isn't within the state's authority. It's within Vladimir Putin's authority. It's within Kim Jung-un's authority and whichever mullah is running Iran.

The Supreme Court in 1989 ruled that the state – a case involving Texas, nonetheless -- had no say in how Americans comport themselves around the U.S. flag. The ruling protected the most unpopular protest one could make: burning the flag.

Not only did the court protect the act, it elevated the status of its protection, as it is speech in protest of the government.

Some like Donald Trump have said we should nuke that constitutional protection. The funny thing is that the "official" ceremonial means of retiring a flag is to burn it in the hands of a veterans organization. Yeah, try writing that into the Constitution.

Those who can't stand provocative statements like Kaepernick's, like Mari Oliver's, like those of Black Lives Matter, bring to mind what Frederick Douglass said about those who "profess to favor freedom yet depreciate agitation."

The whole effort to use the Constitution to scratch an authoritative itch, like banning flag burning or institutionalizing school prayer, suggests people who don't value freedom at all. They don't believe in human rights. They believe in the power of a social majority to inflict its will.

We see this increasingly in the assaults on libraries and public schools that seek to meet the needs of diverse student populations.

Those institutions are brick-and-mortar embodiments of the pluralism the founders intended.

In the recriminations faced by Mari Oliver and protesters of police brutality, we see what Harry Truman had in mind when he said, "Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures."

Kaepernick was assailed for hating his country and disrespecting our fighting forces. Yeah, right.

We'll give the last word to one of the great warriors for civil justice and activism, author James Baldwin:

"I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

So, GOP, now lying is disqualifying?

2022-04-04T13:18:00.001-05:00

The purpose here is not to defend Madison Cawthorn.

Madison Cawthorn is indefensible

With Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert and Paul Gosar, he's a member in good standing of the Congressional National Embarrassment Caucus.

The Republican from North Carolina is 26 but acts a decade younger. This tendency got him in trouble with Republican leaders when he claimed he was invited to orgies by fellow partisans in Congress. He also threw in that they did cocaine.

Later he admitted to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy this was a lie. Said untrustworthiness caused McCarthy and other key GOP leaders to denounce him.

As stated, I'm not here to defend Cawthorn. But why penalize him for lying?

We are talking of a party that has built itself around a lie, the biggest lie in American history -- religiously, devoutly, without shame.

This is a party built to the specifications of the disgraced, twice-impeached ex-president who continues to promote the Big Lie with each sunrise.

Not only does he promote the Big Lie in word, he did so in deed Jan. 6 as the Capitol was terrorized over his calculated falsehoods.

I invite anyone who takes these matters lightly to read "Betrayal" by Jonathan Karl, who covered the Trump White House for ABC News. By the way, "Betrayal" isn't Karl's term alone. It also comes from William Barr, Trump's man at Justice once upon a time, who said that Trump's comportment Jan. 6 was "a betrayal of his office and supporters."

You want to punish someone for lying? After Mike Pence told Trump a vice president had no power to reject electors, Trump issued a statement saying Pence said the opposite, that he agreed the VP had that power.

What is beyond "beyond the pale"? That is what Donald Trump did to stay in power.

No American has committed a worse offense against this nation than to (1) convince millions the election was stolen, and (2) actively seek to subvert the people's will.

Back to young Congressman Cawthorn, who, heart and soul, completely bought into the Big Lie and spoke at the Jan. 6 rally. Isn't that a sufficient merit badge to lie about something else and stay in Republican good graces?

Cawthorn even went out and claimed that the Jan. 6 riot was instigated by Antifa. Hey, GOP. This guy has worked to gain your trust.

Then there's the oddly unfortunate case of Mo Brooks. The Alabama congressman was one stand-up dude at the Jan. 6 rally, calling on MAGA faithful to "start taking down names and kicking ass."

That ought to be enough to earn him a free lifetime pass in any GOP primary.

However, recently Brooks, seeking to become Alabama's U.S. senator, made the horrifying error of implying at a rally that Republicans should put the 2020 election behind them (!!!) and focus on elections to come.

Enraged, Trump pulled his endorsement.

Come on, man. Mo Brooks was a wholly committed Big Liar. He not only put on his camo cap and did his darnedest to incite violence. He assigned some of his own staff to help organize the rally.

So, set us straight, GOP: Who among your ranks gets shunned for lying these days? Who gets a free pass – other than the greatest liar ever to flush documents down a White House toilet?

I'd like to ask rank-and-file Republicans to name one falsehood Liz Cheney has uttered since she decided that she could not remain silent in the face of Trump's corruption and the events of Jan. 6.

Cheney is dead to the Wyoming Republican Party for one reason alone: She won't lie.

So we return to the dilemma of Madison Cawthorn and the question he needs to ask of his party leaders: Since when are y'all interested in truth?

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

OK, Senator: Let's play, "Rate My Faithfulness"

2022-03-27T22:42:00.000-05:00

When it comes to courage under fire, the pithiest sayings all seem masculine. As in, "Bigger man than I," or, "That's some cajones."

None of course apply to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

From her forbearance amid a withering Republican offensive in her confirmation, let's just say the lady's got some ovaries.

So brainless and insidious were some of the questions, if I were the nominee I'd have stormed out of my hearing long before, say, Lindsey Graham did.

I'd have a major problem, confirmation-wise, in that I would have been more inclined to throw questions back at GOP senators than indulge them in their made-for-Fox News theatrics.

If Ted Cruz, for instance, asked me, "Do you agree that babies are born racist?" I wouldn't have paused for a thoughtful answer as Brown did. I would have responded, "Not sure, Ted. At what age did your racism set in?"

When Sen. Josh Hawley asked me if I was soft on terrorists, I would have said, "It depends, Senator. Are we talking al-Qaida or the terrorists you fist-bumped at the Capitol?"

But what would have caused me to pick up my papers and hit the exit would have been the inanity Lindsey Graham asked of Jackson: "On a scale of 1 to 10, how faithful would you say you are, in terms of religion?"

My response wouldn't be hers, which was thoughtful, personal, and – yeah, religious.

My response would have been, "None of your business, Senator. Since when do we apply religious tests to functions of our democracy? Since never. You irk my soul."

However, before heading to the exit, having blown up my confirmation chances but also realizing I still had the microphone, I would add:

"Funny you should bring up religion as a criteria for high office, Senator."

"What's your position on adultery? Where does that rank on your scale of faithfulness?

"How many demerits would I get for bedding a porn star and then paying her hush money?

"How many points off for going to the extent of establishing 'catch and kill' arrangements about one's sexual exploits with a national tabloid?

"How many deductions for mocking disabled people? How about people from other nations, and calling their homelands 'shithole' countries?

"Any points off for inflating the value of your properties to gain pricey loans, and at the same time deflating those same property values to avoid taxes and your insurance bills?

"To what extent is basic hypocrisy a drag on one's 'scale of faithfulness'?

"How about railing against undocumented workers while exploiting their work?

"How about offering one's self as a voice of the working man and then stiffing contractors who work for you?

"How about expressing almost no interest in religion most of one's adult life until it becomes politically profitable?

"How many demerits for, in a position of extreme power, dangling military aid for a country that is on the edge of extinction for the purpose of political dirty tricks?

"How many points off for attempting to subvert the world's oldest democracy after the voters have had their say about who shall lead them?

"Is there any penalty at all for exhorting a crowd that turns into a mob and, though you're the only person who could stop the mob, you do nothing?

"On a scale of one to 10, how does that all calculate?"

Those would be my last words in my confirmation hearings for my Supreme Court nomination. Maybe Sen. Graham and I could discuss our respective faiths further in the stairwell.

He was being slyly deferential when he said to Judge Jackson, when asking of her faith, how often she attended church, mentioning that he only managed a few church services a year.

I know a lot of Americans who have never darkened a church door and who show more fealty to moral standards and basic decency than those who attend religiously.

For some, Senator, religion is just show biz.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

This is what passes for GOP leadership

2022-03-20T22:32:00.000-05:00

One would think Ken Paxton had sufficient issues unto himself.

Securities fraud for one. At least a grand jury thought so. For two, allegations of abuse of office and bribery. So assert some of his former staffers. And then there's the issue of conspiring to nullify 81 million votes on Jan. 6, 2020.

So why would a busy Texas attorney general, which we assume Paxton to be, arise on a lovely morning in March – my favorite Texas month – and make the birth gender of Rachel Levine an issue?

Why? Well, of course, Ken Paxton felt the need to oppress someone.

I say "of course" because this is what Paxton and his party do.

Levine, U.S. assistant secretary of Health and Human Services, is transgender. Last week she was named one of USA Today's women of the year.

Between his coffee and his OJ, this caused Paxton to flex the same Twitter finger that would scratch Donald Trump's itch.

"Rachel Levine is a man," Paxton tweeted.

This is what stands for leadership in today's Texas Republican Party.

Nice tweet. It's sort of like, say, in 1947, a dismayed reader finding Jackie Robinson's picture on the sports page and sending the clip to the editor with the words, "This man's skin is a swim in melanin."

Yes, once upon a time, dignifying a person born with that pigment was something the dignified did not do, especially in the South.

Things changed, and whole industries of indignation sprouted forth when "they" made headlines with their marches and alarming orators.

The voice of the oppressor could be heard as well – loudly and clearly, his path lit by wooden crosses.

And don't you know politicians lent an ear. Or what's a Southern Strategy for?

What's this got to do with Rachel Levine and Ken Paxton's itchy Twitter finger?

It has to do with the Republican Party playbook and the success it has had in making "others" objects of fear, derision and wedge politics.

One thing about the GOP playbook is that it's a loose-leaf binder. The party itself might be narrow, but inside is ample room for "others" to use as wedge concerns.

There were brown people who didn't speak "our language." There were black "welfare mothers" driving their Cadillacs. There was the "gay agenda." There were Muslims plotting "sharia law" for all.

Any strategist will acknowledge a problem when a political playbook grows yellow and weathered. Fortunately for the GOP, the 21^st century discovery of transgender people in our midst provides for newly Xeroxed strategies on crisp, white paper.

Did we say "industry of indignation"? To judge by actions in Republican-controlled legislatures, one would think that no greater threat exists than a transgender individual in a bathroom stall.

Of course, it is no threat at all – no more so than the "threat" posed by gay teachers or gay office supervisors, or gay soldiers or sailors or Marines, or governors.

But it certainly makes for fresh wedge politics to appeal to those dismayed by equal treatment of "others."

And so, a rash of do-something legislation. Bills to keep trans athletes in their place. Measures to treat transitioning as child abuse. And let's not talk about gender issues in school, though some Republican policy makers can't stop talking about them.

So there's little mystery as to why Texas' attorney general would think a March day is a good day to mock a transgender person.

He's running for re-election and has a stout opponent in a GOP run-off.

He doesn't want Republican voters to think about securities fraud allegations or alleged professional misconduct or his role in attempting to overthrow a lawful election.

And they won't if he can change the subject – say to one woman's gender.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

It's all about you, Gov. DeSantis

2022-03-13T22:48:00.000-05:00

Question: Since when did acting like an oaf become an audition for higher office?

Ooh, ooh. I know that answer.

It was when a candidate mocked women, mocked disabled people, bartered in crass comments about foreigners and people of color. And then that candidate, to America's shame, ascended to its highest office.

That explains Ron DeSantis.

Recently in a foul-tempered photo op, the Florida governor was in full oaf.

He impatiently told high-schoolers who had been lined up to be part of his photo backdrop to take off their masks.

"It's not doing anything," he said. It's time to stop "this COVID theater."

Then he sighed like he was surrounded by toddlers. What I saw was a governor embarrassing teen-agers to make a point. On some of them, it worked. But a few kept their masks on.

Geeze, Mr. Governor. Those who have worn face coverings amid a deadly pandemic didn't do it for kicks.

DeSantis has made petulance in a pandemic one of his defining qualities.

He's decided that fighting Anthony Fauci is more important than fighting the disease. Talk about theater.

He's mocked the CDC. He's fined school districts that required masks. He hired a surgeon general whom one can infer is unvaccinated. He won't say. What the man says, as pediatricians everywhere cringe, is young children shouldn't be.

While most of the country was taking the pandemic seriously and limiting gatherings, DeSantis made Florida the world's largest super-spreader.

Not surprisingly, it ranks No. 7 in the nation per capita for COVID deaths, according the Beckers Hospital Review.

One would think Florida would be extra-cautious with its immense senior population.

But this is all about Ron.

And it's about a strain of humanity less concerned about the greater good than about fun, profit and self-interest.

We're seeing the same type of behavior in the so-called Freedom Convoy – valiant truckers who have gummed up North American highways to protest life-saving measures: vaccines, masks.

This co-opting of "freedom" reminds one of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' statement, "Your liberty to swing your fist ends where my nose begins."

Your nose: pathway of pathogens.

If COVID-19 were plainly symptomatic in all instances, the case for masks would be easier to understand. It isn't.

But of course, this isn't just about masks. It's about self-interest vs. community interest, whatever the need might be.

The interesting thing is that those most possessed of self-interest state most loudly they worship a savior who said selflessness should guide every action.

Not for a second are these principles guiding Ron DeSantis or his role model at Mar-a-Lago.

Sometime during this fraught period, with people's annoyance thresholds no higher than their kneecaps, a term was birthed to describe a certain kind of person -- a "Karen."

She's ever-aggrieved, pathologically privileged, besieged by inconvenience. She has a smartphone and isn't afraid to use it.

One problem with this – aside from broad-brushing all Karens – is that we have no male equivalent.

Since I haven't heard any nominations for this, let me enter "Ron" as the man who has all of "Karen's" characteristics.

Rons are full of grievances, but a few really grate at the moment.

Rons will vote in the next school board election based on one issue alone: their irritation with face coverings.

Rons think the whole pandemic thing was overblown and/or likely a Chinese plot. And if it wasn't a Chinese plot, the Chinese and Dr. Fauci are up to something.

Rons think Fauci has "politicized the pandemic," as opposed to, say, politicians who know as much about epidemiology as the average first-grader.

By the way, to their great credit, some of the students DeSantis upbraided kept their masks on. The better to not contract whatever he has.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Trump and Putin: more than mutual admiration

2022-03-06T22:32:00.000-06:00

Forever logged in video history:

Walter Cronkite sitting a nation down to report the death of a president.

Edward R. Murrow standing up a Red Scare demagogue.

And now:

Tucker Carlson checking off reasons not to hate a warring madman.

You might not have seen that, but your grandchildren will. Rest assured, a whole lot of Russians already have.

Well, ahem -- apparently there was a course correction at Fox News after "Rootin' for Putin" by all appearances was atop the talking heads' white board. But Tucker Carlson can never take back what he said.

Someday he will shake his wavy head at what possessed him. Of course, it's no mystery.

His guy – Donald Trump, the man for whom Fox News' propaganda brigade has cast its lot for five devoted years – owns Tucker. He is, in the words of George Will, one of Trump's "poodles."

And so his cue for this frightening moment in human history was from the con man who from his Mar-A-Lago hideout called Putin's invasion "genius."

Trump's assessment is fully explainable as well. In Putin, Trump has always had a friend in need.

The day after the invasion began, based on blatantly concocted pretenses, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations unblinkingly stated that in the United States, the "legitimately elected president of the country was overthrown."

Wait. Is that the Russian Federation speaking or the Republican National Committee?

Right now, rest assured, Russia's Internet Research Agency is calculating how Trump's newborn Truth Social web site can help get its message, through pure propaganda or fake news, to the American masses.

At the same time Putin's internet army is configuring the next offensive by which it seeks to return Trump to power.

Putin, being one to take the long view, knows that "Trump Jr.: 2028," looks like a worthy investment as well.

Speaking of long views, a basic misconception about Trump's attempt to overthrow the 2020 election is that it was all impulse, not planning.

Much like Putin assembling his forces, Trump telegraphed his intentions long before voters had their say.

Then, like Putin, Trump relied on pliant partisans to do the unthinkable, to rationalize tactics they knew they couldn't.

Illegally, Trump demanded that whole states he didn't win be delivered to him via fake electors. He told Georgia's secretary of state that following the law was a crime.

Disgraced and disgraceful, people Trump twirled around his little finger -- Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley – did his bidding as they attempted to stop the awarding of electors.

And then came the mob -- Trump's armed forces, taking their bile and the brutality into the halls of our Capitol.

We are aghast at the assault on Ukraine's capital. Recall, however, that Jan. 6 the same thing on a smaller scale happened in ours, except without missiles.

It wasn't munitions-free, by the way. For some reason, pipe bombs placed at the headquarters of the major parties have gotten almost no attention.

Today Ukraine's president fears for his life. On Jan. 6 our vice president shared that very problem. And if any lawmaker who dared affirm the people's choice encountered the mob, he or she would have been torn limb from limb.

In the refusal of either Putin or Trump to listen to what the people say about their respectively dangerous gambits, we see the danger of one person having too much power.

For those Republicans (That would include Lindsey Graham) who view Putin as a madman, know that a man you respect, Attorney General Bill Barr, came to believe he was dealing with the same specimen when a screaming, red-faced Donald Trump refused to concede to reality about his rejection by the voters. Trump still does.

Now Putin refuses to acknowledge the will of the Ukrainians who created their own democracy.

What a pair – so close: two autocrats living their separate lies.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

A plunderer needs a pretext

2022-02-27T20:31:00.000-06:00

"Denazification and militarization."

Vladimir Putin cites such reasons in his bid to crush a neighbor nation.

Nazism – those frightened masses cramming the exits to Poland. Militarization – those hunting rifles dusted off to confront invading tanks.

"Nazism" in a peaceful democracy with its Jewish president.

At this point, please forgive me for having taken a mental detour. When I heard "Nazi," for some reason "antifa" came to mind.

Antifa – that menace seeded conspiratorially among the masses cramming American streets demanding racial justice.

Antifa – a superior pretext for pepper balls and rubber bullets in Lafayette Park, for Donald Trump's demand to send enlisted personnel into the streets of America. (Fortunately, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley resisted.)

Plunderers need a pretext.

Those who rioted in the halls of the U.S. Capitol had one Jan. 6, the biggest lie in American history – a lie so big that history books will assign it capital letters – Big Lie – so big it will need no further explanation.

How many times did squawk jocks at Fox News sprinkle "antifa" into reports of those horrors without a shred of evidence? Countless. It was TV coverage someone of Vladimir Putin's ilk would love.

So, too, with reports of a deadly brown-skinned caravan assaulting our nation from the south – "terrorists," "anarchists," MS-13 in its ranks. Not penniless, destitute, hopeless. Not mothers and fathers and their little ones.

As pertains to Ukraine's subjugation, let's just say that Putin mouthpiece Dmitry Peskov may well have ceded his role to Fox News' Tucker Carlson and to Trump himself ("genius," "very savvy").

A plunderer needs a pretext.

One could say this applies in many red states right now as they roll tanks over voting rights.

The Brennan Center for Justice calls Republican "ballot security" measures, ratcheted up for years, a "solution in search of a problem."

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott knows this. As attorney general he attempted to show that voter fraud was rampant. He came up with about as many examples as playoff wins by the Dallas Cowboys this century.

Enter Donald Trump and the Big Lie. Enter Trump's assault on mail ballots. Ah hah! A pretext!

Pursuant, as governor, Abbott signed a law that has caused massive delays in the delivery of mail ballots for primary elections. It's completely pointless. It's confusing, and it's motivated entirely by a Big Lie.

Among Republican targets in this offensive are those evil things called ballot drop boxes – made of metal, secured from the elements and thievery. Too many of them. Too much convenience. Drive-through voting? Oh, no. Convenience is the devil's playpen. Voting must be more difficult, says the red ministry.

One lie after another after another.

As we observe in horror what prevarications and paranoia have wrought from Russia, one must feel for the Russian troops sent in to kill next of kin and to destroy a historic capital city. For what?

Putin's forces differ only by degrees from the big-bellied rioters who stormed our Capitol, convinced by their leader of the outright theft of an election – a leader who said he'd march with them to the Capitol and then who retreated to his TV room to clap hands and nosh at the buffet table.

For now we can only hope that in the world's reaction and in the popular resistance, Ukraine becomes, in the words of commentator Max Boot, the "ulcer for Putin" that Afghanistan was for his predecessors.

So, too, should Americans stand up against the Big Lie and its purveyors, and fight like hell whenever the bogus pretext guides public policy.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

How we cater to couch commandos

2022-02-20T22:35:00.000-06:00

Adam Lanza just wanted a sporting chance.

He had only so much time to kill once he entered Sandy Hook Elementary. His schedule had been pinched by having just shot his mother dead.

What's a tormented individual to do?

Remington Arms had the answer: the Bushmaster XM15-E2S .223 caliber AR-15 style killing machine.

Twenty-six dead, including 20 first-graders, in a fleet matter of minutes.

For good measure he'd also brought along a 12-gauge shotgun, a Glock 10mm handgun and a Sig Sauer 9 mm handgun.

So much killing to do, so little time, before police arrived and he turned a barrel on himself.

He needn't have weighted himself down. As the National Rifle Association will assert approvingly, to get it all done, all he needed was that AR-15-style piece, smartly accompanied by 10 30-round magazines.

All of this spells good commerce – the American way, the sporting way, the couch commando way.

"Couch commando" wasn't in my vocabulary until reading reports of the $73 million settlement in the suit by parents and living victims of the Sandy Hook massacre, having sued the maker of the murder weapon.

In a sly end-run around Republican laws to exempt gun manufacturers from liability, the suit focused on the merchandising of the weapons in question, how the pitch for the weapon wasn't about self-protection (ahem) or even sport (ahem). It was about titillation.

As the plaintiffs demonstrated, it was an appeal to "troubled men," embodied in the Remington slogan, "Consider your man card reissued."

In recent years we have spent a lot of time dissecting the thoughts of killers for whom a gun in hand completed those thoughts.

George Zimmerman. Kyle Rittenhouse. The father-son team that killed Ahmaud Arbery.

These more celebrated cases aside, we now have a growing trove of incidents involving right-wing head cases for whom rage percolates, with arms amassed for just the right time.

The Anti-Defamation League calls it the growing problem of "troubled perpetrators."

ADL attributes at least 333 deaths in the U.S. over the last decade to right-wing extremists.

Ah, that he-man license. When investigators studied the online activities of James McLeod, a Colorado man who killed five before police took him down, they found he resided in something called the "manosphere," described as a "toxic masculinity subculture" based on "revenge fantasies."

Then there is Matthew Coleman, a New Mexico QAnon adherent who killed his two children because he was convinced his wife had passed on "serpent DNA" to them.

Let's face it. Only a fine line separates that kind of lunacy from that espoused by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green and her gun-toting cohort in Congress, Lauren Boebert, both of whom resisted restrictions against packing heat on the House floor.

Not only are our gun laws tailored to the whims of the certifiably deadly, in the Age of Trump the Republican Party has become so dominated by the extreme right that clearly dangerous individuals like these are on our payroll.

Aside from having a gun-themed restaurant where waitresses worked with pistols strapped to their sides, Boebert's only claim to fame before a Republican-dominated district elected her was that she confronted Beto O'Rourke at a campaign rally over his vow to get AKs and AR-15s out of the gun stream.

Beto's cause is righteous. Convenience for couch commandos isn't the intent of the Second Amendment.

By the way, Remington has taken the Donald Trump route to rehabilitation and to further filthy lucre. It twice filed bankruptcy before reorganizing and announcing plans for a new Georgia factory.

It doesn't make the Bushmaster anymore, but trust in Remington to always have titillating options when a troubled man comes to call.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.